Friday, January 23, 2015

President Barack Obama has always held Israel in contempt.
At his first White House meeting with the Israeli prime minister, he excused
himself for an hour and a half to have dinner. Before that he and his
administration had consistently denounced Israeli housing policy. He has made
Jeremiah Wright proud.

We might add Obama’s embrace of the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood and his lobbying against Israel when it was fighting back against
Hamas, but, you get the picture.

Most observers believe that Obama is now focused like a
laser on negotiating a nuclear arms deal with Iran. Under Obama the Iranians
have solidified their hold on Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and now Yemen. The Sunnis in
Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are terrified. Allowing the mullahs to have
nuclear weapons seems, if anything, like a great leap into the abyss.

As always, the administration is willing to lie to get its
way. In his State of the Union message Obama declared that his deft negotiating
strategy had caused Iran to halt the expansion of its nuclear program.

Democratic Senator Robert Menendez responded that Obama
seemed to be using talking point written in Tehran.

The
United States hasn’t “halted” Iran’s nuclear program. A week before that claim,
Iran announced it would build two more reactors. During this diplomacy, it has
made progress on its plutonium program and continued enriching. It was supposed
to freeze centrifuge activities at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz,
but the IAEA reported last fall it was feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into
the IR-5 centrifuge there.

When anyone disagrees with Obama, he showers them with
contempt. He has not limited himself to Israel and its prime minister.

A decorous president would have congratulated Republicans on
their victories in the last election. All previous presidents, both Republicans
and Democrats have done so.

Obama did not. He allows his emotions to dictate his
behavior.

Given his sense of his own importance he does not feel bound
by the rules that define governance. He violates protocol with impunity.

Obama despises Republicans and has done everything he can to
circumvent their power. It is not limited to his negotiations with Iran. By
issuing executive orders and memoranda, Obama has most recently redefined the
relationship with Cuba and declared that he would no longer enforce certain immigration
laws. He has said that he will do as he pleases and he has dared the Republican
Congress to stop him.

So, Congress, in the person of House speaker Boehner invited
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in
early March. And he did so without consulting with the White House, a breach of
protocol.

The administration was furious. It declared that the
president would not meet with Netanyahu during his trip. And then, to add
insult to injury it offered up a lie.

It suggested that the head of the Mossad had told American
senators that he was opposed to placing more sanctions on Iran.

A
senior Israeli official delivered an uncommonly harsh attack on US
PresidentBarack Obama's administration Thursday evening, following the American
report that alleged that Mossad Head Tamir Pardo had warned US senators against
further Iran sanctions, in contradiction of Israel's official stance.

"The
fraudulent claims against the Mossad Head were raised by the Americans
yesterday, despite a message that had been transmitted to them on
Tuesday by Intelligence Minister [Yuval] Steintz,” the senior Israeli source
told Channel 2news.

He
added that Israel had gone over the minutes of the meeting between Pardo and
the delegation of senators, and that Pardo had not said what was attributed to
him.

"Leaking
the Mossad Head's statements, even if they had not been falsified, is a serious
breach of all the rules,” the senior source added. “Friends do not behave like
this. Information from a secret meeting must not leak out.”

The
report said that Mossad officials advised US senators who were
visiting Israel recently to hold off on further Iran sanctions, saying
that they would hamper, not help, efforts to persuade Iran to give up or allow
full international supervision of its nuclear program.

"The
Head of Mossad did not say that he opposes additional sanctions on
Iran,” said the spy agency Thursday.

"Mossad
Head Tamir Pardo met on January 19, 2015, with a delegation of US senators,”
Mossad said in a statement. “The meeting was held at the request of the senators
and with the prime minister's approval. At the meeting, the Head of
Mossad stressed the extraordinary effectiveness of the sanctions that
have been placed on Iran for several years in bringing Iran to
the negotiating table.”

"The
Head of Mossad noted that in negotiating with Iran, a policy of
'carrots and sticks' must be adopted, and there are not enough 'sticks'
nowadays,” it added.

Furthermore,
said the agency, he “said specifically that the agreement that is being
formed with Iran is bad and could lead to a regional arms race.”

Obama has already threatened to veto any Congressional bill
placing sanctions on Iran. He wants a free hand with Iran and believes that any
deal is better than no deal. He will do whatever it takes to stop anyone from
interfering.

OBAMA’S
MESSAGE then is clear. Not only will the diplomatic policy he has adopted not
prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons (and its ability to
attack the US with nuclear warheads attached to an ICBM), but in the event that
Iran fails to agree to even cosmetic limitations on its nuclear progress, it
will suffer no consequences for its recalcitrance.

For those who believe that Congressional Republicans have
been far too accommodating to the Obama administration, Boehner’s invitation to
Netanyahu was a brilliant move. For once the Congress was not going to bend over
and take it.

For most Republicans and many Democrats it was an important
gesture, one that showed the world that Congress had started to fight back
against Obama’s imperial overreach.

And, no one should fail to notice the fact that the
Republicans were hitting the Democratic administration where it hurt: with
Jewish voters.

Large numbers of Jewish voters voted for Barack Obama. Many
Jews supported Obama’s campaign with cash contributions. God only knows what they
were thinking, but it is important that they recognize, however belatedly, that
the Obama administration is not and has never been a friend of Israel.

Speaking for the administration House minority leader Nancy
Pelosi denounced Speaker Boehner for ignoring protocol. The White House
explained that it will not meet with Netanyahu during his trip to Washington.

But, as has been noted, in 2007 Pelosi flew to Damascus to
negotiate with President Bashar Assad, even though the Bush
administration had asked her not to do so.

As for the White House’s refined sense of protocol, Stephen
Hayes explains:

This is
the same White House that last week had British prime minister David Cameron
making calls to Capitol Hill to lobby lawmakers against more sanctions on Iran.
It’s the same administration that had to apologize to Senator Marco Rubio and
others for violating its pledge to “consult Congress” before making any
unilateral changes to U.S. policy on Cuba. This is the same president who has boasted
repeatedly of his ability and willingness to ignore the legislative branch and
use his “pen and phone” to do what he wants. And this is the same
administration that used the cover of anonymity to call Netanyahu “chickenshit”
in a recent interview.

So far, so good. The lines of political division are clear.

Except that this morning Peggy Noonan, representing the
pusillanimous wing of the Republican Party declared that Boehner’s invitation
to Netanyahu was a bad idea.

In so doing Noonan was siding with the Israeli left,
represented by the newspaper Haaretz. She quotes the paper, without mentioning
its political bias:

The
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports the idea was “cooked up” behind the back of
the American president, that the White House, the U.S. State Department and the
U.S. Embassy in Israel “were totally excluded from these contacts,” that they
had been neither consulted nor informed before the invitation was issued by the
Republican leadership. (Haaretz also noted that Mr. Netanyahu faces an election
in two months.)

Noonan continued:

Mr.
Netanyahu is welcome to visit and speak to Americans anytime he wants, but
Congress’s invitation… is a violation of diplomatic form, tradition and
expectation. The United States has an elected president who serves a four-year
term, and in that time he gets to conduct the nation’s formal diplomatic
efforts and policy and to oversee its foreign-affairs apparatus and agencies.

Does
Mr. Obama deserve to be embarrassed in this way? Of course he does! In his long
years in the presidency he has demonstrated no regard for the Republicans of
Congress, and now they are showing no regard for him.

A violation of diplomatic form… Tsk. Tsk. When has Obama
respected formality and respected the voice of the people as expressed by the
American Congress?

Diplomatic form for me and not for thee … is a recipe for
defeat.

It’s good to say that Republicans should turn the other
cheek, but eventually you run out of cheeks.

Noonan called it “a damaging snub.” She is worried about
divisions between Congress and the president… ignoring the fact that sowing
division has been the Obama strategy from the beginning.

In her words:

But it
is still a bad move, a damaging snub that makes divisions more dramatic, and
not only between Congress and the president. Mr. Obama is forced to decide
whether to invite Mr. Netanyahu to visit the White House while he is in
Washington. The White House announced it will not, pointedly attributing the
decision to “the proximity to the Israeli election.” This too is a snub, and it
is hard to see how it does anything to fortify U.S.-Israeli relations.

Of course, if Iran gets the bomb and develops missiles that
can easily reach Tel Aviv, wouldn’t that be worse than a damaging snub?

And, what did Noonan think of the repeated Congressional
efforts, led by Democrats, to defund the Iraq war? Was it a breach of protocol
or a damaging snub?When Republicans were in the White House Congressional
Democrats had no compunction about undermining a war.

Noonan concluded:

Congress
has the authority to do what it’s doing, but is it the responsible thing?
Congress and the White House are supposed to work together on foreign affairs,
as a matter not only of politesse but practicality. If this scenario becomes
the norm—an angry Congress embarrassing or putting in a poor position a sitting
American president—it would make America look to the world more torn and
divided, more at the mercy of forces, more incapable and of course
dysfunctional. Would that enhance America’s position or damage it?

Sad to say, Peggy Noonan has embarrassed herself here. She
has shown that Obama was right in one thing: some Republicans insist on
bringing a knife to a gun fight.

1 comment:

I don't think Peggy Noonan embarrassed herself here. She's totally correct. It is a breach of protocol, and it does make things worse in terms of our global standing and that we're not acting as a nation, with one voice, about the most dangerous nation in the world: Iran. The fact that the person speaking is the Israeli Prime Minister makes it a soft landing. The Republicans needed to make a move against Obama. I just wish they'd have chose a different dimension for counterattack. Iran is a serious menace in just about every foreign policy consideration.

With all that said, I hope we see the heart of the story: no one trusts Obama. This is what happens when a political actor behaves like a petulant child. Obama brought this on himself because he is rude, caustic, dishonest and remarkably thin-skinned. He is not a sympathetic figure here, and nobody listens to Pelosi anymore anyway. This "snub" is totally self-inflicted, yet we know Obama and his chatterers will make him into a victim. Life is do unfair for Obama. Boo-hoo.

I'm not looking forward to two years of a narcissistic, antisocial, entitled lame duck president who says he's going "on offense." Doesn't sound like someone who has the good of the country in the forefront of his mind.